絮 (xù): cotton wadding

Meanings

1 cotton wadding
2 cotton fiber
3 fluff
4 to talk at length
5 long-winded

Characters

絮

xù

cotton wadding/fluff/long-winded

Examples

HSK 7-9

柳絮在空中飞舞，像雪花一样。

Liǔ xù zài kōngzhōng fēiwǔ, xiàng xuěhuā yīyàng.

Willow fluff danced through the air like snowflakes.

HSK 7-9

老人喜欢絮叨，总是把同样的故事讲了又讲。

Lǎorén xǐhuān xùdāo, zǒngshì bǎ tóngyàng de gùshi jiǎng le yòu jiǎng.

The elderly person likes to ramble, always telling the same stories over and over.

Tips

usage

絮 has two main senses: as a noun it means fluffy fiber (like 柳絮 willow fluff or 棉絮 cotton wadding); as a verb/adjective it describes repetitive, long-winded talk (絮叨).

Components

radical

糸 mì

silk; thread (radical form)

Bottom 糸 - the full silk radical in its uncondensed bottom-position form. It anchors 絮 as something fibrous: cotton wadding, willow catkins, raw floss padding a winter coat. The radical also extends to the metaphorical sense of 絮叨 - speech as long-winded as a trail of floating fluff.

phonetic

如 rú

like; as (here phonetic)

Top 如 supplies the sound - rú drifting to xù in old readings. Originally 如 pictured a woman speaking, meaning 'to follow' or 'like.' Here pure phonetic role; the meaning sits with the silk radical below. Same phonetic appears in 茹 (to eat) sharing the rú reading.